Survey/journal availability

MarkS

Moderator
I have often found the availability of surveys and journal articles a little frustrating. When I go caving I am usually interested to look at surveys and read accounts of exploration of where I?m visiting, but these are often tricky to find.

A quick google of some of the major UK cave systems from various regions (e.g. Easegill/OFD/Peak Cavern/Slaughter Stream Cave/Swildons Hole) suggests that digital copies of remotely up do date surveys are hard to come by. I know the MCRA website is a pretty good resource for the Mendips, and of course cavemaps.org is good for the Dales, but in many cases the surveys available are very limited. Bits of survey are sometimes available, e.g. for conservation monitoring, various simplified surveys are available, and it?s possible to use survex data and the few drawn up surveys, e.g. for Yorkshire and the Mendips in the Cave Registry Data Archive, but searches are often in vain, and it seems to be an exception when I can find this information easily. I often wonder why this is.

In the years before the internet, this sort of question would obviously have been academic. Clubs/individuals publishing surveys and journals would have to pay for printing costs, so there was no choice but to sell them, and no choice for individuals to either source or buy hard copies. However, nowadays it seems the norm for surveys and journals to only be available as hard copies despite the option to publish them digitally at essentially no cost.

I live a couple of hours from the nearest caving hut and local clubs have quite limited libraries. To read journals and see detailed surveys, it is necessary for me to either spend time at weekends reading in a caving hut rather than going caving, or to buy every journal/survey I have an interest in, which are fairly prohibitive barriers.

To me it begs the question, what is the main reason for clubs to publish journals and surveys? If it is to make a profit, then fair enough I suppose. Just selling hard copies is probably the best way to maximise profits from such things. However, if the main motivation is to publicise the activities that have been carried out, to provide documentation of cave exploration to the wider caving community, and to help facilitate future exploration, then nowadays surely this would be best achieved by making them available online as well?

I have pondered this for a while and am curious as to what people think? There is an indication that availability is beginning to change, e.g. with the CNCC making surveys (for example from the NPC and YCC) available online (thanks!). I wonder if more clubs will follow suit.
 

Badlad

Administrator
Staff member
Cave mapper started a brilliant resource but a large number of surveys remain to be published on there.  I think the trouble was getting permission from the authors or clubs as some felt it should only be published in their own journals.
Always the surveys are a team effort but control of the survey may be in the hands of just an individual or club.  Few I would expect are ever going to make any money out of it.  I'm with you - the more available freely on-line the better. 
 

alastairgott

Well-known member
Many of the surveys for the best trips in the peak district are readily available on the peak district caving website. P8, giants, oxlow, nettle, youds (including gentlewomans), jug holes.

Also both the eldon and the TSG have agreed to make information freely available on information in past journals. For the TSG this means that some information is popping up online much like this lovely cartoon of Mark wright and the fawlty towers dig. https://peakdistrictcaving.info/component/jdownloads/send/1762-surveys/217-fawlty-tower-sketch-10-11-84

For the eldon, this mean the fantastic oxlow, giants survey is online and i've seen their hillocks knotlow survey online as well.

You mentioned peak cavern and the use of the SSSI audits, this is one of the best way of getting the trade routes onto an A4 sheet. The most up to date version of the published peak survey doesn't have the NCC shafts, but the peak district caving website does now have the ncc shaft survey on it.


https://thedca.org.uk/sssi-monitoring/sssi/castleton/castleton-peak-cavern/category/11-castleton-peak-cavern
 

Pegasus

Administrator
Staff member
alastairgott said:
For the TSG this means that some information is popping up online much like this lovely cartoon of Mark wright and the fawlty towers dig.

Would it be OK if I put this cartoon on the home page & shared to useyourdatabook?  Thanks  :)
 

alastairgott

Well-known member
I don't know anything about copyright, and i'm not an individual member of the DCA, but looks like it's ok to me.

I'd say try it and see, i'm sure mark wont mind.
 
To me it begs the question, what is the main reason for clubs to publish journals and surveys? If it is to make a profit, then fair enough I suppose. Just selling hard copies is probably the best way to maximize profits from such things. However, if the main motivation is to publicise the activities that have been carried out, to provide documentation of cave exploration to the wider caving community, and to help facilitate future exploration, then nowadays surely this would be best achieved by making them available online as well?

Nobody is going to make much if any money selling surveys.

It amazes me that a person or team can put so much effort into survey and then hide their work away so nobody can see it. There may be an argument in some cases to restrict access to the raw data but surely the plan and elevation output can be made available to all.

As to where the survey output should be kept, I'm not sure but a in central regional location, you would think has to be better than all over the place.

With the BCA data  archive we are not encouraged to save final outputs in the various areas I think mainly to save server space. It is after all a data archive . However there are some excellent surveys/posters on the site.

As I am on about it if you have or know anyone who has any old survey notes and sketches get them in the archive before they are gone forever. Absolutely anything is better than nothing.

Cave mappers site as Badlad said is very good but can be frustrating due to the lack of full size images. The idea is great, if it could be evolved into an all area country wide resource that may be an option.

The new CNCC site is also very good with much more information than just surveys but It could be expanded to hold more a bit like the MCRA site which I like even though I find it a little clunky.

Perhaps the regional councils need to get together and thrash out a common format for cave info and then run their separate regional databases along similar lines. Fat chance of that I think.

Back on the original subject of surveys, I don't know how we can stop people/clubs hiding them away it seems bonkers to me. All our Nidderdale re-survey data and outputs so far are available to all. We have a long way to go to finish it but do what you want with it, it's in the BCA archive.

Actually thinking about it the latest New Goyden survey only needs a few more hours tarting up to finish it and I then could get it on the CNCC site, another job to do then, this caving, surveying, digging malarkey is a  bloody full time job.
 

Mark Wright

Active member
There were too many redirects with the Faulty Tower link when I tried it. Don't know if its just me.

You can click on the Faulty Tower sketch from this link

https://peakdistrictcaving.info/home/the-caves/castleton/peak-cavern

We were just testing the water to see how easy it would be to dig it and we got a bit carried away. I can't remember who drew the cartoon but you are more than welcome to use it. The cartoon is exaggerated, but only slightly. Getting out was interesting. Ben Bentham made a much better job of it.

Mark
 

pwhole

Well-known member
The problem with old surveys is the huge amount of time and effort required to scan them - we have tons in the TSG library, and the British Caving Library has even more - swelled recently by the collections of John Beck and Doug Nash - all of which also need scanning. Most home or office scanners will realistically only manage A3 without stitching, but we have stuff up to A0 - which means only a professional drum-scanner can cope with it. So now it starts getting expensive, as well as time-consuming. Many of the original drafters are dead, so copyright may also be an issue if no declaration was made. We're currently wrestling with the logistics of all of this, given that most of the people willing (or at least able) to do it have to hold down a job of some sort too, meaning many entire evenings have to be given up to it - if we still want to actually go caving at weekends. I'm not trying to be a downer on the idea, as I'm a desperate survey and note-grabber too, but the task is huge.

For new surveys, produced digitally, then it obviously gets a lot easier to share the output, and I don't think many would object to that, unless sites are especially sensitive.

As for journals, I can only speak for myself, but I think a hard copy is absolutely required for work of this sort, as libraries need to hold these as archives of important work done. The scientifically-oriented community also require hard copy for future references and attribution. And the club members who put in the time to do the projects, and more importantly were willing to actually write them up for an audience get some gratification from seeing their writing and pictures in print - it's a great boost, as some people may not have written any prose at all since they left school, and will obviously then feel more confident about doing it again in future.

And honestly, the new TSG Journals we produce are indeed fund-raisers for the club - we do aim to make a profit from them, as funding the club long-term is critical, in order that we can keep providing the facilities (and library archive) that guests expect, and also that members who put in the effort on all the projects feel that their time was compensated for, even if not personally recompensed. Professional-quality print is now available to anyone with a computer, and costs are coming down, making short runs of frankly uncommercial publications viable at last. This wasn't possible even twenty years ago. Our older Journals that are still in print however are available at bargain-bucket rates, so there's not so much of a financial obstacle. We need to shift them, frankly. Personally I don't have a problem with out-of-print Journals being made available online, but I'll discuss with the club ASAP.

Buy the new one here. I admit it, I'm shameless  :halo:
 

Pitlamp

Well-known member
Pegasus said:
alastairgott said:
For the TSG this means that some information is popping up online much like this lovely cartoon of Mark wright and the fawlty towers dig.

Would it be OK if I put this cartoon on the home page & shared to useyourdatabook?  Thanks  :)

I can confirm that the cartoon in question was drawn by an artist called Jack Jefferson. He obviously holds copyright; my advice would be not to make use of it without permission.

It's just possible that we might contact Jack to ask (if people believe it's worth it) but the effort may be disproportionately great.

Copyright law is a right pain sometimes but it's important to stick within it because it can bite back.
 

BradW

Member
Never mind the legalities, Pitlamp, simple courtesy should count for something. I wouldn't dream of helping myself to the flowers in the neighbour's garden without asking, even if they were planted to enhance the view for more than just the owners.
 

complex

Member
As pwhole says, it all comes down to 2 things: Time and Copyright.

Scanning old journals and surveys is a time-consuming task. Old journals are often in differing formats and are of differing print quality (some are very faded) so scanning them and turning them into modern documents takes time (speaking from experience it takes much more time than you initially expect!). Do you just want to scan them (so you have a collection of images of the pages of the journal) or do you then want to turn them into text (which makes them more readable and searchable)? That takes even more time - sometimes its quicker to just re-type the text from scratch.

Ensuring that you have the original copyright holders permission to do all this can also be problematic :(

Having said all that, I think that most clubs are making progress. Of the various Mendip clubs, in addition to the excellent MCRA website, the individual clubs are making progress with putting their back catalogue online. The Wessex, UBSS and BEC have an almost complete archive online, and the Shepton, MCG and Cerberus all have a partial (and growing) collection. In other areas the SWCC, Chelsea, WSG, Red Rose, White Rose, YRC and others all have a growing online archive of old journals.

Unlike the TSG, the Shepton are not looking to make a profit from selling journals (the market is just too small to bother!) so they are available to non-members for a fiver to cover printing and postage costs.
 

prahja

Member
The Royal Forest of Dean Caving Club have a complete archive of newsletters online - from 1964 to the present
(been there for quite a few years now). It was a lot of work to scan/reformat. The slide (photography)
archive has now been scanned as well.
Some surveys are published online but most local cave surveys are copyrighted and can?t be published on the website.
 

Kenilworth

New member
I've a few thoughts that may or may not apply to the UK. Many mappers are possessive of their projects and do not want to be "scooped" or taken over by another caver or entity. Thus they want the project to be completely finished before it is publicized. Many large projects are never finished completely. The surveyors cling indefinitely to the idea that there is something significant yet to be done, yet they never do it.

People survey for different reasons, least commonly to provide the "caving community" with helpful information. It's hard to say that any of these reasons are better than others.

The best way to profit from documentation, club or individual, is to keep information confidential until there is enough of it to produce something of salable quality and quantity. The best way to preserve documentation is to ensure that it exists in hard copy in an accessible (not necessarily easily or freely accessible) place, and to publicise the existence of the data (not necessarily the data themselves) online or otherwise.

Trivial surveys and journals, for example those that I myself might produce, are of interest to an extremely small audience. What to do with this material might be a difficult question if the work itself was not adequate fulfilment.
 

alastairgott

Well-known member
Kenilworth said:
Trivial surveys and journals, for example those that I myself might produce, are of interest to an extremely small audience. What to do with this material might be a difficult question if the work itself was not adequate fulfilment.

Trivial is in the eye if the beholder.

Kenilworth the second, may be quite pleased if you do publish, then he'll know whats there and be able to push it.

Plus if you catch a lot of detail in a small survey it can be a wonderful piece of work. Good for anyones wall, maybe even a local bar?
 

Kenilworth

New member
alastairgott said:
Kenilworth said:
Trivial surveys and journals, for example those that I myself might produce, are of interest to an extremely small audience. What to do with this material might be a difficult question if the work itself was not adequate fulfilment.

Trivial is in the eye if the beholder.

Kenilworth the second, may be quite pleased if you do publish, then he'll know whats there and be able to push it.

Plus if you catch a lot of detail in a small survey it can be a wonderful piece of work. Good for anyones wall, maybe even a local bar?

Yes, you are right, though things worked out a little differently in the case of my first publication. I was working with the help of old club newsletters which published small surveys and cave descriptions. With that help we were able to push what they left undone and fill in gaps between known caves. No one is going to be able to duplicate that pattern though, as we didn't leave much of anything to find or push. Nonetheless a book was made and has happily been appreciated by local non-cavers more than I could have expected.

The local bar eh? One of my favorite things about visiting the UK has been the nice pubs. They don't exist where I live. The bar here is a dingy crud-hole and rightly stigmatized as such. People here don't want to be seen going in or out of bars unless they want/already have a reputation for alchoholismn, fornication, and filth (I do not and haven't). The local public area is the filling station, where mostly farmers stand around and talk about how much money they aren't making. Can't think of a local wall which might want a cave map... That's sort of a shame.
 

caving_fox

Active member
There was an attitude, although it's declining, that you shouldn't need a survey to navigate around a cave, just get out there and learn it by hand on repeated trips. (Everyone's favourite cave draenen has had a secret survey for years after permission arguments between from those who drew it). It's not easy if you're in manchester to get to draenen often enough to learn the whole system!

If you're looking for new places to dig then you do need to know how the passages relate.

I'd happy pay to download copies of surveys, if they were editable so I could print the bits I need at the scale that is convenient. But it means club/personal websites would have to be secure enough to host payment systems, which is an extra level of hassle after the surveys have been put online in the first place.

But to all those mentioned above who have hosted such very useful documents. THANK YOU! You've all made my life as a caver much easier, and it is appreciated, let alone the stars who've put the herculean efforts in to draw them up.
 

Rob

Well-known member
Just spotted this thread. For what it's worth, the Eldon PC made a decision a couple AGMs ago to make our surveys publicly available. The uploading process is ongoing, but we've made a start:

http://www.eldonpotholeclub.org.uk/index.php/homepage/club-history/surveys
 
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